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The door opens and Dad is standing there, looking through some papers. He looks up, distracted.

“Oh, hello! I didn't realize we had visitors.”

Kellerman turns to me. There is a clear warning in his eyes. “Ted, would you do the honors?”

“Dad, you remember Mr. Kellerman,” I say tonelessly. “He's the guy with that organization that's tracking down lost treasures the Nazis looted during World War Two.”

“Oh, right. Nice to see you,” Dad says, barely paying attention.

Kellerman smiles. “I'd shake your hand, but I'm just getting over a cold. Wouldn't want to give it to you.”

“Mom said you weren't coming home till dinner,” I say, trying to send a message with my eyes.

Dad shrugs. “The meeting finished early.” He turns to Kellerman. “So you're the guy who thinks Uncle Ted was a master criminal.”

“Oh, I guess I didn't really explain very well what this has to do with your wife's uncle,” Kellerman laughs. “We were never accusing him of anything. We just thought he might have had some information about a very valuable artifact, and Ted was showing me a pad containing his last words. I had hoped he might have said something.”

“Was it helpful?” Dad asks.

“No, I'm afraid it was a dead end,” Kellerman replies. “But Ted and his friends were so
cooperative and helpful
I want to take them out for pizza before I leave LA.”

“That's very nice of you!” says Dad, completely oblivious to the tension. He turns to Isabel, her face full of concern.

“Ted tells me you're going to be leaving us! I'm so sorry.”

“Me too,” Isabel says, pale as a ghost.

“You are planning on coming back soon, aren't you?” asks Dad.

“I really want to,” Isabel almost whispers as Kellerman keeps close to her. “But it's really not up to me.” Her eyes dart at Kellerman and then back to Dad.

“Well, I've got a plane to catch at five, so I'd better get these kids their pizza,” Kellerman says, winking. “But it was very nice to see you again.”

We head out the door.

“Wait!” Dad calls.

Kellerman stops and turns slowly to Dad.

Yes, the brain cells have finally kicked in.

“You know what's a shame, Isabel? I never got to talk about
The Portrait of a Lady
with you.”

This
is what he cares about?
Great, Dad.

“I know,” Isabel said, her eyes locked on Dad's. “I think my favorite part is where Isabel decides to stay in London and not return to that idiot Osmond.”

Dad looks confused.

“But—” he starts, but Kellerman cuts him off.

“I don't mean to be rude, but we really have to go,” he says over his shoulder as he gently but firmly pushes us kids in front of him. “And don't worry, I'll have Ted back for dinner.”

We head down the front walk as Dad looks after us.

The street is deserted, and my heart sinks when I see the black Jaguar parked on the street. Kellerman switches the douk-douk into the hand that holds Isabel, fishes out his key fob, and unlocks the doors with a beep. He motions to me.

“Open the back door and get in. Just remember, play along and all this will be nothing but a good story later.”

Caleb and I slide into the spacious leather backseat of the luxury automobile.

He's going to need his hands to drive, and he'll be distracted. That's when we can make our move.

Kellerman reaches into his pocket and fishes out two strips of what look like thin plastic.

“Aren't zip ties wonderful?” he asks, tossing them into the backseat. “You can use them for so many things, like keeping your computer cords all neat and tidy. Now, first, Caleb, if you'll just pull that edge through the other end, and, Ted, you can put your wrists behind your back, and then, Caleb, slip the loop over Ted's hands. Now pull it tight. Atta boy!”

I hear the
ziiip
as the plastic cord tightens around my wrists. It's locked into position. I struggle but quickly realize that nothing I can do will break the band.

Kellerman has Isabel reach behind and do the same thing to Caleb, but he isn't as pleased with her work.

“You can pull harder than that!” he admonishes. Kellerman yanks Caleb's band and Caleb lets out a yelp of pain.

Isabel glares at Kellerman. “You didn't have to do that.”

“And you didn't have to try to deliberately leave it loose either,” Kellerman retorts as he slips a third band roughly around Isabel's wrists and pushes her back into the front seat. “So we're even.”

Kellerman pulls the seat belt around Isabel's body, clicks it in place, then leaps out of the car and does the same to us.

“Now we're all buckled up,” he says, once again the cheerful uncle. “Wouldn't want to be pulled over for not wearing seat belts, would we?”

He settles back into his seat and starts the car. He's visibly relaxed now.

“Everyone comfy?” he says. “No one has to go to the bathroom, right? Because I told you to go before we left!” Chuckling at his little joke, Kellerman pulls out a phone.

“What was that address again?” he asks, consulting the paper he took from my room. “234457 Moorpark Street. Let's find the cross street, shall we?”

He gestures at us with the phone.

“Nice phone, right? Brand-new. Just in case you were wondering. I gave my other cell phone number to so many people, you know. It would be easy to trace the GPS on it, if anyone was going to try. Like that gentleman in your picture, Caleb. Such a good likeness!”

I look out the window.

Kellerman continues, “That one is in my hotel room right now. If anyone tries to trace my phone, they'll think I'm sitting in my hotel. This one, well…no one knows about it. Pretty untraceable. That sounds like something you would have thought of, right, Ted?”

I just glare.

Kellerman shakes his head and looks down at the screen. “Okay, so we're off to Moorpark and Valencia.”

“Can I ask you a question?” I finally say to the man in the driver's seat.

Kellerman looks at me in the rearview mirror. He's driving slowly through local streets. “Sure, Ted, fire away.”

“What's your real name? We can't call you Stan anymore, now that we know—”

“Oh, I don't think my real name matters,” Kellerman answers lightly as he speeds up after a stop sign. “Notice I came to a complete stop before moving forward. I know you won't be taking driver's ed for a few years, but listen to me, you'll want to form these habits early.”

“I thought it was because you didn't want the police to pull you over for running a stop sign,” I say.

Keep him talking,
I'm thinking.
Maybe something will come to you.

I'm running through every possible scenario I've ever played in every game, trying to figure out how to loosen or cut through the plastic that's biting into my skin. I look over at Caleb.

Caleb looks down at the zip ties. He almost imperceptibly moves his head to indicate that we should shift our bodies.

I make an elaborate show of moving my shoulder around. Soon we're back to back.

“Getting comfortable, are you?” asks Kellerman.

“Yeah, it's kind of hard on your back to sit too long in one position with these on,” Caleb says.

I feel something tickling my hands. It's Caleb's fingers trying to reach for my zip tie. I hold my breath.

I look up at the front seat. Isabel sits immobile, pressed against the door, as far away from Kellerman as possible. Meanwhile, Kellerman seems distracted by the traffic. There's an accident in front of us, and flashing lights.

Caleb's fingers find my zip tie. He grabs it and pulls. Nothing. He pulls harder, and I nearly fall off the seat.

Guiding the car expertly as the police wave him past the accident, Kellerman casually turns his head. “You know what's also great about those plastic zip ties? You can't undo them. Not like rope or handcuffs. You can't slip out of them or release someone from them.” He smiles. “The only way to get them off is to cut them.”

Caleb and I slump down, defeated.

“And I'm glad no one was silly enough to try to jump out of the car when we passed the police. I control all the door locks, of course.”

In the front, Isabel comes to life. Her eyes lock on Kellerman with hatred.

“The one thing I don't understand is what you're planning to do with whatever you hope to find in this storage unit.”

“That's a good question, Isabel,” Kellerman says. “You kids are so smart! You know that there's no way I could sell it on the open market. But that's only true if it's a painting or a piece of sculpture. And even then, there are buyers—anonymous buyers in Asia, for instance, with whom I deal quite a bit. They give me lots of money for all sorts of things, no questions asked.”

“Why are you so sure it's going to be there?” Isabel presses. “It could just be another clue.”

“Let's hope it's not,” says Kellerman, the smile frozen on his face. “Ah! Valencia! Moorpark should be coming up any minute now….”

We turn and cruise out of the shaded residential area.

The street is beginning to look more and more industrial. Low warehouses and small factories sit behind gates and barbed-wire fences baking in the sun. There are no more shops or malls or houses.

Kellerman finds the address, and the car is suddenly in front of a nondescript gate with a rusted sign that reads
VALLEYVIEW LONG-TERM STORAGE FACILITIES. OPEN BY APPOINTMENT ONLY
.

Underneath is a phone number. Apparently no one is here right now, as there is a thick chain attached to a formidable lock holding the gate tightly shut.

Kellerman gets out of the car and looks at the gate, hands on hips. He takes a pair of sunglasses out of his pocket. For a brief moment, his back is turned.

Isabel immediately wheels around in her seat and whispers to me, “So what's the plan?”

I look back her blankly. “Plan?”

“Yes! What do we do?”

I realize that Caleb is also looking intently at me, glancing outside every couple of seconds to check on Kellerman.

“I…don't know,” I reply flatly.

“You—but you have to know!” insists Isabel annoyingly. “All this time you've been sitting back there. I just assumed—”

“Look, it's not that simple!” I snap.

“Obviously,” Isabel hisses. “But I tipped off your father. Now all you have to do is get us away from Kellerman.”

“How did you tip off Dad?” I ask in amazement.

“Remember what I said about the ending of
The Portrait of a Lady
? It was completely incorrect! He'll figure out that something's wrong, and—”

“What are you talking about?” I groan.

“I told him how cool it was that Isabel stayed in London, when in fact she actually did return to her horrible husband. Everybody knows that,” Isabel says proudly.

I hang my head. “Let me get this straight. You think my dad—who never listens to anyone—is going to hear you make a mistake about the ending of some book and figure out that we're being kidnapped by this guy? And then convince the other parents or the police to find us?”

Isabel's face reddens. “It wasn't a mistake. He would know I was deliberately saying something wrong. I know you don't think so, but he really seemed to notice—”

“—that you made some mistake about a book…yadda yadda yadda. I know,” I reply through gritted teeth.

“Okay. Forget it. You get us out of here, Mr. Master of Exit Games. You always seem to know exactly how to get out of things. So prove it.”

“First of all, they're called escape games, not exit games,” I say.

“Guys! Guys! He's coming back!” Caleb whimpers.

Kellerman has returned to the car. I'm surprised to see him walking past the driver's door and going around to the back. I hear a click and the trunk pops open. Kellerman takes something out and slams the top down.